Step 1: Don’t blame shift. There is a time for criticism, so keep reading, but too many people use the imperfections in, or a lack of understanding of, their retirement plan to feed the self-deceptive siren’s call to inaction.

Yes, it’s true that there is systemic as well as plan-specific dysfunction in many 401(k)s—and 403(b)s, TSAs, TSPs, SIMPLEs, 457s and whatever other “defined contribution” retirement plan you might have at work.

Yes, it’s true that 401(k) plans are often needlessly complex and confusing, often filled with a seemingly endless array of choices, designed more for plan sponsors than for participants.

Yes, it’s true that defined benefit pension plans—when the company you dedicated yourself to for many years would continue to pay a stream of income through your retirement—were helpful but are now largely extinct.

Yes, it’s true that Social Security benefits will likely provide less—or at least less value—for future generations than for present and past, putting even more pressure on our own ability to save for retirement.

But 401(k) and equivalent vehicles are still the best way for most Americans to create a tax-privileged reserve that is designed to generate future income when we’re no longer capable of doing so. Even justifiable criticism shouldn’t be an allowance for negligence on our part.

Step 2: Control what you can. Despite the many maladies likely infecting your 401(k) plan, we still have control over the elements that determine our investing success the most—the amount we contribute and the allocation of the portfolio.

You’ve heard the grandfatherly wisdom of saving 10%. Well, as it turns out, it just might work. A crude calculation suggests that if you save 10% of your income right out of college through retirement age, you’ll likely have saved enough to generate approximately 66% of your pre-retirement income in retirement. If you add Social Security benefits and subtract your annual savings, you’ll likely have more disposable income than in your last day of work.*

If you are able to increase your annual contribution amount to 15%, you’d have enough to generate 99% of your pre-retirement income, so anything you get from Social Security would be a travel bonus.

But life is not a linear Excel calculation. Life changes and tends to get more expensive in the middle when we’re supporting the 2.5 kids, yellow lab and the picket fence. Therefore, you’ll likely need to save more at the front end when you have fewer expenses and on the back end after the kids have moved out, so consider the 10% rule of thumb as less of a cap and more of a floor.

Saving more helps reduce the risk of falling short of your goals. Saving more enables you to take less equity risk, thereby reducing the stress of bear markets, allowing you to sleep better and stick with your strategy.

Regarding the optimal portfolio allocation, the weight of evidence suggests that the bulk of our long-term returns are attributable to proper asset allocation, not security selection. That is, the proportionate arrangement of your mutual funds is more important than the funds themselves. And since the vast majority of actively managed mutual funds get beaten by the index they’re chasing, you’ll have probability working for you if you use passively managed index funds if they’re available.